Learn@Sea

Online learning for personal development and accredited qualifications

We believe seafarers deserve access to life-enhancing education wherever they are in the world. Our Learn@Sea platform offers practical courses that can be studied anywhere at any time.

Improving your Maths and English can be difficult, especially when you're away from home and working long hours, but they are essential subjects if you want to get promoted, move ashore, or develop other skills for your career.

 

 

We've been helping seafarers get ahead for more than 260 years, and we understand how difficult it is to study when you're at sea. Learn@Sea was developed exclusively for seafarers and is designed to make it as easy as possible to access award-winning content, on any device, anywhere in the world, with or without an internet connection.

We cater for both individuals and organisations, large or small. Whatever your goals are, Learn@Sea will help get you one step closer for a fraction of the price of being in the classroom.

    • It is for seafarers whose first language is not English. It provides reading, spelling, listening and vocabulary for beginners.

    • English@Sea + is for seafarers who want to improve their English as part of their preparation for international English language exams, such as IELTS or Marlins. 

      By the end of this course, they will have analysed and practised:

      - Understanding the main points of sentences
      - Describing their experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions
      - The most relevant grammar and vocabulary for fluent writing and speaking

      The course is jam-packed with audio and visual explanations.

    • This course is an introduction to maritime geography, designed to help you get a quick grasp of the most significant areas, cities and ports of world shipping.

      It focuses on the production and transport of raw materials, showing why freight shipping is concentrated in certain regions and along certain shipping lanes.

    • Whether you are in the deck department, the engine department, the electro-technical department or you are a steward, it is important for you to improve your communication skills, and train to lead. This is one of two modules on leadership and management, and its aim is to introduce you to different leadership styles and to get you thinking about communication and management.

    • Whether you are in the deck department, the engine department, the electro-technical department or you are a steward, it is important for you to train to manage people and processes. This is one of two modules on leadership and management, and its aim is to enable you to work effectively with your team. It will cover concepts around coaching before delving deeper into how to develop and manage your team. There are tips on recruitment and inducting new staff.  The final section guides you on how to make decisions.

    • Maths@Sea is for nautical students and those about to begin a course at nautical college. The entire programme is marine themed - it uses relevant, nautically-flavoured examples and language. As well as functional maths, it also covers elementary aspects of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry: essential skill sets at nautical college, but often no longer covered as part of the school curriculum.

      If you've completed the original award-winning Maths@Sea course, you're in a good position to take the next step into more advanced algebra, spherical trigonometry, and even calculus. This course will give you a taster of those topics, and will provide a great foundation to explore them in more depth. This is the same as maths plus: advanced algebra, spherical trigonometry, and calculus. You make a one-off payment for a printed certificate for a badge of excellence certificate from Open Awards

    • This is an introduction to the media and social media, for business. It gives you tips on TV interviews, advice on choosing your social media channel and crafting a press release.

    • You will find the facts and figures in this course, look at different types of slavery, including slavery in the shipping industry, learn how to identify a victim of slavery and what action the maritime sector is taking.

    • This course is for the underpinning knowledge relevant to the navigation of a vessel, which will provide a valuable basis for a career at sea in a variety of roles.

      This course is suitable for anyone who does not have prior knowledge in this subject and it has been written in accordance with MSQ Unit 95 - Introduction to Navigation. By the end of this course you will be able to know, and be able to calculate, the effect of tides on navigation; be able to plot a course; be able to produce a passage plan; know how to calculate courses and know the functions and uses of electronic navigation aids.

    • This course is designed as a more advanced complement to the Marine Society's Navigation@Sea course and together they aim to take learners to the level required for the Maritime Skills Alliance MSQ Units 11 (Vessel Navigation & Tides) and 41 (Chartwork & Tides).
      Learners undertaking Open Awards Level 3 Passage Planning and RYA Coastal Skipper/Yachtmaster will also find the course useful.

    • It is an introduction to the techniques and approaches of project management. It gives you an overview as to what a project manager does and what sort of person they should be.

    • This guide looks at some of the potential uses for spreadsheets that you might encounter whilst working at sea. At sea, crews use it to store crew lists, including information such as passport numbers and dates of birth, keep track of stock and prices in the café and gift shop and much more

    • This course covers all aspects of the buoyancy and stability of vessels presented in bite-size topics. Content is user-friendly, combining technical diagrams, images and self-test exercises to check understanding.

    • This course outlines a number of ways you can bring order to your most important tasks and goals, thereby gaining time to meet your priorities and winning back those vital hours you need to relax and recharge

    • It gives you practice in report writing, formal letters and grammar essentials. You learn to organise ideas and express them with confidence, draft written reports, letters and email and identify common mistakes made with apostrophes, spelling and punctuation.

    • This course is designed to prepare you for a career in the shore based side of the shipping industry. It is aimed at anyone interested in building a good understanding of all areas of shipping and the maritime industry.

      The course covers chartering, documents, bills of lading, liners, port agency, ship management and shipping business.

      (FREE for Coming Ashore mentees)

       

Industry recognition

As well as winning the prestigious SeaTrade Investors in People Award, courses on the Learn@Sea platform have been recognised by the Institute of Marine Engineers, Scientists, and Technologists and the Nautical Institute for continuing professional development.

 

"From experience, they’d be very useful for officers coming back to college for Mates/Seconds/Chiefs exams; I wish I’d had something like that before my Chief Mate’s course."

Chris Lowe – Senior Lecturer, Warsash Maritime Academy

 

Learn@Sea FAQs

    • Our subscription is flexible so you can cancel any time. Some of our learners only want to work through the course content for a few weeks to brush up on their skills and others want to use the platform as an ongoing support tool and subscribe for longer.

      You only need to pay as long as you want access to course content.

    • Cancelling is very easy. While you are logged in, just go to Activities>Subscriptions in the main menu and choose which subscription you'd like to cancel. Your access will remain open for as long as you've paid for, so if you've just paid for a month you will have access for the rest of that month but will not be charged again.

    • Each of our courses contain mini-assessments throughout the content. Once you've completed a course and passed the quiz at the end, you will receive a certificate which can be downloaded, printed, or added to your LinkedIn profile.

      If you have purchased Maths@Sea Accredited or Maths@Sea Plus Accredited, you will also receive your Open Awards printed certificate.

    • Yes, each course has a final assessment. You can take the assessment as many times as you like, so depending your result, you can review the course and try again.

    • First of all, we're a charity. We believe seafarers deserve access to life enhancing education wherever they are in the world and we don't think that anyone's financial circumstances should get in the way of completing one of our courses. We deliberately sell the courses at a price well below the commercial rate so that everyone can afford access. The reason we can afford to do this is thanks to the generous support of the International Foundation for Aids to Navigation (IFAN) who have funded much of the development costs for the programme.

      If you want to help us fund this programme you can click here to make a donation.

    • Yes!  Whether you want to go from Rating to Officer or Chief to Superintendent, or simply refresh your skills and knowledge, our courses will give you the skills and confidence you need to start your journey.

    • It is designed to make it as easy as possible to access award-winning content, on any device, anywhere in the world, with or without an internet connection.  Remember that you need an internet connection to download the app itself.

    • Yes, the app is free to download but you first need to set up or renew your subscription. We currently have separate apps for English, Maths, Maths Plus, Stability and Writing.

    • We recommend the free Skills Radar assessment, which will tell you what you are good at and where you need to improve.  When you download the app, you’ll see that it is automatically included.

    • The app remembers where you were and what you did. Look at the study menu on the top right-hand side and select Learning Lines.  There, you can see all of the things you did from when you started using the platform.  A statement might say ‘I Understood this’ or ‘I read this’.

    • Stay in touch with the Marine Society by following us on Twitter: @ MarineSociety.  Check https://www.marine-society.org/learnatsea to look out for new courses.

Fill in your email address below to subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

  • Call us:
  • +44 (0)20 7654 7000
Marine Society and Sea Cadets is a charity registered in England and Wales 313013 and in Scotland SC037808.

Marine Society and Sea Cadets is a charity registered in England and Wales 313013 and in Scotland SC037808.
Copyright © 2025 Marine Society College / All rights reserved.
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